


scarcely can speak

by Myargalargan



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Implied Sexual Content, One Shot, Post-Canon, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Sukka Week, Sukka Week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26194306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myargalargan/pseuds/Myargalargan
Summary: Sokka is the man with the plan. And the schedule, and the map. But after the war ends, there’s no longer a clear goal, no more final destination around which to plan logistics, and he’s left unsure how to define what’s next. Including in his relationship with Suki.aka A logic- and reason-driven young man struggles with the meaning of love and allowing himself to be vulnerable in a post-war world.
Relationships: Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 81





	scarcely can speak

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sukka Week 2020 on Tumblr! The prompt is "post canon."
> 
> Title from "Dinner and Diatribes" by Hozier

For a while, Sokka didn’t even realize that he wasn’t saying it. He and Suki spent as much time together as often as they could, but then they would inevitably have to say goodbye, which always sucked and was always painful. Suki would look up at him with her big, dark indigo eyes, and she’d kind of smile, but her eyebrows would be squinchy and sad. Then he’d say something like, “You’re my favorite boomerang,” and she would nod and kiss him, and sometimes it felt like he hadn’t said enough, but he wasn’t sure what else there was. 

***

Suki was tugging at the hem of her top to get it back into place, and Sokka frowned mournfully. At the same time, the way her outfit exposed her toned arms and belly had his fingers twitching. He’d barely stopped touching her, but he already couldn’t wait to get his hands on her again.

When Suki looked up and noticed his frown, she tilted her head to one side.

“What?”

“I just...miss them,” he explained.

“You just miss wh-” She cut herself off, looked down at what she was doing, and then leveled an arch look back at Sokka, her left hip and eyebrow both cocked. “You can’t be serious.”

“What?” he asked innocently. Finally giving in to the urge, he reached out to wrap his hands around her waist and pulled her towards him while he got to his knees on the bed. “You have really nice boobs. I can’t help it. I really like it when they’re...around.” 

“Sokka.” Suki captured his hands before they could make their way to her breasts, lacing their fingers together and holding their joined hands up by her shoulders. Playfully, he started pushing into her palms, and she tried to hold in her laughter while she pushed back. “We _just_ agreed we would go get dinner. I’m hungry!”

“So am I!” Using the tension in her arms as leverage, he dropped his mouth to her bare shoulder, making exaggerated munching sounds while he nibbled at her skin. Laughter burst out of her like a shout, and Sokka grinned against her triumphantly.

They’d stolen away, just the two of them, to the seaside on a small Fire Nation island, after not having seen each other for nearly two months. The fact that they’d been separated for so long, and that Suki had decided to wear sleeveless, midriff-revealing Fire Nation clothes on their trip, was _doing_ things to him. The way he saw it, he was making way up for lost time. 

Suki fought back against his chomping jaw by letting her arms go a little slack so that Sokka lost his balance. As he was collapsing into her, she counterbalanced, managing to swing him around so he was facing away from her with his hands behind his back.

“Gotcha!” she crowed.

“Oh, yeah, that’s definitely not a turn-on,” he quipped when his pulse jumped. 

“Later,” she said into his ear, and something _else_ jumped, and he closed his eyes on a whimper. 

“So mean,” he said. Suki responded by releasing him and pinching his earlobe affectionately before trailing out of the room. Helpless to do anything else, Sokka followed after her, drawn to her as if leashed. 

Out on the promenade of the little seaside town, the air was close, and everywhere he touched her — because he couldn’t keep himself from running his fingers across her shoulder, down her spine, along the curve of her waist as they walked — everywhere became slick with a light sheen of moisture that was really not helping his state of mind. When she called his name, he had to shake his head to clear it.

“Sokka, look!” Suki ran her hand down his arm and loosely tangled their fingers together so she could tug him towards a shop. It was full of accessories: armbands, headpieces, chokers, and necklaces, many of which appeared to be adorned with mother of pearl, shells, or sea glass in a variety of colors. “Do you want to go in?”

He was...honestly sort of eager to get dinner over with so they could go back to the rental house and make good on Suki’s _“later"_ promise. But he _was_ in the market for a few wardrobe updates. And what was a vacation without a few souvenirs? One look back at Suki and his mind was made up. Suki was _not_ into accessories, at least not for their own sake, but she was gazing at him with a face so wide open that his chest tightened — this diversion was entirely for his benefit. 

Once they were inside the shop, Sokka’s gaze fell on a pair of black armlets that looked like they were made of lava rock. His eyes widened, and he let out a tiny squeak, but Suki rounded on him quickly.

“Wait, shhh!” she hissed, throwing a finger to his lips. Her eyes were blazing like they sometimes did before a fight, and Sokka had to clamp his lips between his teeth to restrain his excitement at whatever she was planning. “Don’t let the clerks know how much you like anything, or they’ll try to gouge us. You like those?” she asked, voice still low, tilting her head slightly towards the armlets.

Sokka nodded once.

“Okay, let’s keep browsing. We’ll come back to them.”

They walked around, checking out several other items in the store. Occasionally Suki would stop and pretend to examine something while she eavesdropped on other customers’ conversations. Every time they stopped, Sokka eventually found himself bouncing on the balls of his feet, but he only ever noticed after Suki thwacked him in the arm. She would give him pursed looks that probably meant something like, “Calm down,” or “Stop drawing attention to yourself,” but weirdly just made Sokka want to kiss her all over her face. They finally made their way back to the lava rock armlets, but when Sokka reached out to take them, Suki intercepted. 

“Let me handle this,” she whispered, grabbing the armlets and walking to the counter in the back of the store. 

“This is a lovely shop,” she said breezily. She placed the armlets down between herself and the clerk and leaned a hip against the counter.

“Thank you. Those armbands will be thirty gold pieces.”

Sokka nearly choked at the price, but Suki let her gaze wander around the shop, seeming unperturbed. 

“Did you make all these yourself?” she asked.

The clerk folded his arms and jutted out his chin.

“No. I’m a curator.”

“So is everything here one-of-a-kind?”

Suki knew the answer already, Sokka realized. Their little sojourn around the store had been a mission to gather intel, and now the clerk was taking just one moment too long to answer the question. 

“Yes. These armbands are very rare. Thirty gold pieces is a steal.”

Suki stroked her chin.

“I do like them, but… How about five gold pieces?”

“Five? You must be joking.”

Suki didn’t respond, and Sokka felt the difference like a shimmer in the air. When the clerk had taken too long to reply to her before, his pause had been an error. Hers was meant to unsettle him. Sokka’s chest swelled with pride. His girlfriend wasn’t just dangerous in combat.

“I can do twenty-five,” he conceded.

“You know, I actually think I’ve seen armbands with a very similar design before,” was Suki’s reply. “Who’s the artist?”

The clerk narrowed his eyes. Sokka widened his.

“Local craftsman. Doesn’t sell anywhere else. This is a real quality item. Twenty-five gold pieces is practically giving it away.”

“We really can’t afford more than five.”

Then it was like watching a rubber ball bouncing back and forth between two brick walls. The clerk threw out a number, Suki countered, the clerk insisted, Suki refused. The clerk tried to appeal to her good nature, Suki backed away as if threatening to leave. Like reeling in a fish, she had the clerk jumping to keep their business. His number lowered, and lowered. And as Sokka watched Suki expertly wrangle the negotiation exactly where she wanted it to go, he felt this impossibly large well of emotion spring up for her inside of him, so big it felt like it was going to burst out of all his orifices. It wasn’t the first time he’d had this feeling. But it was the first time he’d felt compelled to name it. 

“Fine,” the clerk was saying. “Five gold pieces, but you’re practically robbing me, y’know.”

“Thank you very much,” Suki replied like honey, taking a box from the clerk with the armbands wrapped inside. “It was a pleasure.”

She gave the box to Sokka once they were out on the street again along with a kiss on the cheek. 

“Happy vacation.” She looked awfully pleased with herself.

Sokka, overcome, pulled her into a short alley and then into a heated kiss.

“I have no idea what you did back there, but it was amazing. He may as well have had his eyes closed, for all that he saw you coming.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” she teased. “I have a lot of practice taking men by surprise.”

And then the word started rattling its way around his head: _l_ _ove_. But with it was an equally disquieting sense of panic. 

“Want to get food now?” Suki asked.

“Are you kidding? Does an otter penguin have four flippers?”

“I actually...don’t know the answer to-”

“Yes, the answer’s yes to both. Let’s get out of here.”

He did his best to ignore it after that, the word and its partnering anxiety. But from then on, every time he didn’t say it, it felt like it was on purpose.

***

Sometimes, after he and Suki had been together, like sexy-times together, Sokka felt like he’d been shattered into pieces and put back together again with Suki in the seams. It made him think of this kind of pottery Suki had shown him one time on Kyoshi Island, where artists had taken broken ceramics and repaired them with veins of gold. At the time, he’d been fascinated by the technique, but when he thought of it in terms of his own mended edges, it made him a little uneasy. How many times could a person stand to be fractured and pieced back together? 

***

“You two are so gross,” Sokka teased. His sister and Aang had just finished giving each other a “sweetie”-laden goodbye, and Sokka thought he was being pretty good-natured about it even with the teasing, but Katara smacked him in the shoulder anyway.

“Like you and Suki are any better, the way you turn into a slobbering puppy every time you see her.” Sokka squawked, offended. “ _Oh Suuuki, I luuuuuurve you_!” Katara cooed, voice high and syrupy.

“Ugh, I do _not_ sound like that.” Katara’s smile — more of a grimace, really — was sardonic and unimpressed. “We don’t even say the ‘L’ word.”

“The ‘L’ word,” Katara repeated flatly. “Sokka, you’re so immature.”

“What? Do you and Aang say it?”

“Do we say ‘I love you’ to each other? Yes. Of course we do.”

“What do you mean ‘of course’?”

“What do _you_ mean ‘what-’” Katara cut herself off and shook her head as if to drive out the rest of that sentence. “Don’t you love Suki?”

“I don’t know,” Sokka answered, scuffing his foot on the ground and feeling sullen. “What does that even…”

“What does ‘love’ mean?” Katara finished for him obligingly. Her expression had softened considerably and it was making him feel prickly for some reason. Whatever she was sending his way just now — pity, pandering — he didn’t want it. “It’s not something you can define, Sokka. It’s just...something you feel.”

“You see- This is…! People can’t just go around using words that have no definition!”

“Says the guy who goes around saying things like ‘jerkbending’.”

“The difference is — and this is important — that I _could_ define ‘jerkbending.’ Making up new words is not the same as using words with no agreed-upon meaning.” 

“Did something happen, Sokka? Is everything alright with you and Suki?”

“No. I mean, nothing happened, we’re fine. Suki’s great. She’s perfect.” 

_He_ was the jerkbender. Suki was so beautiful, and sexy, and clever, and fun. Whenever they were together, it was like she had this gravitational pull over him, and he couldn’t resist being in her arms. Honestly, just _thinking_ about her had him feeling that tug. Was that the same as what Katara felt for Aang? He and Suki didn’t call each other “sweetie” or give each other saccharine speeches about their place in the world. They hung out. They poked fun at each other. They made out, a lot. That all seemed...pretty different from his sister’s relationship. 

“Katara?” His voice went shrill with the effort of broaching this particular topic. He couldn’t believe he was about to ask this… “You and Aang...kiss...a lot. Right?”

Katara eyed him suspiciously. 

“Why?”

“Just...answer the question.”

“I will not _just_ answer the question! You don’t have any right to know about my private moments with Aang, especially when you turn around and throw them back in our faces like they’re somehow _gross_ or _wrong_ , as if you’re not making out with Suki every chance you get!” 

Sokka flinched, though whether it was from her combative tone or from the way she’d so precisely pegged the crux of his issue without realizing it, he wasn’t sure. He held up his hands in surrender.

“Whoa whoa whoa, look, although it is my brotherly right — nay, duty — to give you a hard time about your love life, I’m asking from a place of innocence, I promise. Purely out of...scientific interest.”

He was seconds away from a magic water jet to the face, he just knew it. Katara had her hands on her hips, and her left eyebrow was raised so high it could flag down an airship. Actually, he’d be lucky if she geysered _only_ his face.

“What scientific experiment or...or theory could you possibly have that requires you to know how often I kiss my boyfriend?”

Nope, that was definitely an ice-shards-to-the-head kind of voice, _not_ her soak-you-to-the-bone tone. 

“Nothing! It’s not like that! I was just...comparing.”

“Like a _contest_?”

“No! No. Jeez. Like...you and Aang, you’re so different from me and Suki. I guess I was trying to see if there were any similarities.”

“Oh.”

Sokka looked around for a hole to crawl into. 

“Does it...does it matter?” she asked. “I mean, of course our relationships are different. We’re all completely different people. All relationships are different. Some couples will kiss more, some will talk more, some will fight more...but what’s important is that you care about each other and respect each other, and that you value each other for who you really are.”

Katara looked away, then, and hugged her arms the way she did whenever she was feeling a little shy.

“Aang kissed me first, you know, and it took me a while to figure out how I felt about it. And now we’re taking things kind of slow, because it feels like we can. Maybe…” She glanced sideways at Sokka. “Maybe you and Suki didn’t feel like you had that luxury?”

Well, shoot. For a little sister, Katara was awfully insightful sometimes. But now he and Suki had all the time in the world. So what was next? 

  
  


***

He’d known how to use a club before he could feed himself with utensils. He’d learned how to paint his face before he could construct full sentences. His life had been war, and preparing to die, and sometimes it felt like that was all he knew. 

***

Sokka was sprawled out on the floor of the tent, Suki tucked against his side with her head on his shoulder and her body plastered against his. Her breathing was quiet and even, making Sokka think she’d fallen asleep. Which wouldn’t be a surprise. It was still early, but they’d had a full day, topped off just now with...quite a bit of physical exertion. Plus, he’d been running his fingers over her bare skin, mindlessly and sort of rhythmically, for the past several minutes, and he knew how relaxed that usually made her. 

He’d managed to get away for just a couple of days to visit Suki on Kyoshi Island. When he first arrived, she was teaching in the dojo, and he joined — in full Kyoshi Warrior regalia — for the last part of the lesson. There were several younger girls he didn’t recognize, and Suki later told him they were from some of the other villages around the island. It was a sort of ambassador initiative, a way for the villages to be more interconnected now that the war was over: girls from all over the island would travel to different villages to meet other Kyoshi Warriors, learn their local traditions, and then return to their home village to share the experience, knowing they now had friends and allies in other places. 

“You’re really making a difference here,” he’d told her after the class was finished.

“The war got me on something of a philanthropy kick,” Suki said, smiling at the other girls as they milled around the room. “Thanks to Team Avatar’s inspiration.”

Something about her words made him feel a little...off-center. _Suki_ was the inspiration, standing here surrounded by her fellow warriors and a sense of purpose. Then she turned to him with a grin and said, “I hope you don’t mind camping out. I thought it would give us more privacy,” and that was about all the distraction he’d needed. 

After a properly naked reunion, now he was lying with Suki curled up against him, a soft breeze blowing through their tent from where they’d left a flap open for stargazing. He could hear the high-pitched whirring of cicadas, an almost mechanical drone that was comforting in its monotony. All this, along with the powdery blue-purple light of dusk casting everything in a dreamy film, and Sokka thought there was nowhere else in the world he’d rather be. 

But then his thoughts ground to a halt. Was that true? Or was it just...afterglow? Would he really be willing to give up everything to have moments like these with Suki whenever he wanted? Was that what it meant to love someone — to sacrifice everything to be with them? 

“Sokka.” Her voice was a little slurred from sleep.

“Hm?”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Whatever it is you’re thinking about so hard. You’re fidgeting.” She shrugged one shoulder, and that’s when he realized that the gentle slide of his fingertips along her skin had turned into tapping a tiny drumbeat on her scapula. He flattened his palm against her.

“Sorry.”

She lifted her head to look at him. The right side of her face was vivid pink from where it had been squished against his shoulder, and his heart squeezed in that way it often did when he was looking at her, that way that felt like missing her even though she was right in front of him. Then that word pushed up in his throat, feeling a little like heartburn.

“Suki, I…”

She was looking at him inquisitively, but the effect was muddled by sleepiness, her eyelids droopy, her hair stuck to her cheek. 

“I…”

The word was tumbling through his brain, like a moth trapped in a jar, frantically scrambling for an exit. 

“I...I can’t say it. I’m sorry.”

“Can’t say what?”

“The L-word.”

“What L-wo-”

“I just, I get all of these emotions inside of me, and sometimes it feels like they’re going to explode out of me, but then I just _can’t_ and it’s not like I’m _trying_ to hold it back but then, I don’t know...is that what it means? How are you supposed to know? And I’m sorry, because you deserve it. You deserve someone who can say it. Because everyone says it. Even Katara says it and she’s _way_ more stuck-up than I am. But it’s not fair to you. Because you deserve _everything_ and I can’t give it to you.”

“You’re...talking about love, right? _That_ ‘L-word’?”

He nodded, feeling stupid and sheepish. Was it weird or 100% appropriate to be having this conversation completely naked?

“Sokka. Look.” She sat up, pulling the blanket with her to cover herself while she bent over her knees. Sokka felt a twinge of panic at her pulling away from him. “I can’t answer this for you, but...I’m not sure how much the word itself matters, really. In fact, on Kyoshi, there’s an old tradition of saying something else entirely to express how you feel. Like...I could say, ‘The fireflies in the trees tonight are glimmering with such warmth.’” 

Suki gestured out the opening of the tent, and Sokka sat up to see the gentle blink-blink-blink of the little bugs lighting up the branches. When he looked back at Suki, he wrinkled his nose.

“Fireflies? What do they have to do with anything?”

“Well...it’s about experiencing something in the moment and wanting to share it with the person you care about so you can experience that moment together.”

“Huh…” He thought about it, head tilted to one side as he took in their environment, the sounds of the wild forest just outside their tent, the balmy late-summer air that smelled a little like woodsmoke from the cooking fires in the village below. 

“Suki…” He turned to look at her again. “The...frogs tonight sound like a...bubbling swamp.”

Suki snorted, covering her mouth with one hand.

“Well, that’s not very romantic.”

Sokka shrugged haplessly. This was kind of a disaster, and he’d be surprised if this conversation ended with him still having a girlfriend.

“It’s supposed to be something that really moves you, and makes you think about how much the person you’re with moves you, too.”

He opened his mouth, about to interject, but Suki stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“You can’t force it. You’ll just...know.”

“So people keep telling me,” he griped, dejected.

“I hope you know…” she looked away, out through the opening of the tent, and her cheeks reddened. “I don’t need anything from you besides what we have right now. I’ve never doubted how you feel about me.” Her gaze slid over to him and then quickly away again. “The way you treat me, how much you respect me. The fact that you go so far out of your way to be with me. But...I guess you have to figure out what that means for yourself.”

“Suki, do you…” Sokka started to ask, and then he cut himself off, because it was unfair. 

She smiled softly and then turned so she was facing him directly. There was an earnestness in her expression that made something in his chest go _thud_. 

“Sokka.” Then her smile turned a little coy. “The fireflies in the trees tonight are glimmering with so much warmth.”

***

He’d lost his first tooth when he was five. His parents, who didn’t have any peers who were raising kids Sokka’s age, had neglected to warn him about what was going to happen. So when that first tooth came out, he’d run around the village screaming that he was going to bleed to death because parts of his body were falling off. Truthfully, this was how Sokka had felt about most of his life since his father had left to fight in the war: woefully unprepared and flailing through his experiences, pretty sure it was all going to come to a tragic end at any moment. 

***

Sokka had kind of forgotten how _cold_ it was in the South Pole, or how difficult it was to grip a spear or tie a length of rope while wearing heavy sealskin gloves. When his knife slipped out of his hand while he was cleaning a fish, Hakoda raised a benevolent eyebrow at him.

“ _Don’t_ say anything,” Sokka commanded, emphasizing the _don’t_ with a short pause afterwards.

Hakoda smiled and lifted his hands in surrender.

“Wasn’t going to.”

“I’m just a little out of practice,” Sokka grumbled, grabbing the knife again.

“Did I say anything?” Hakoda queried innocently. 

“Have I told you I studied sword fighting with one of the greatest swordmasters and sword makers of all time?”

“Yes, son.”

Sokka had of course told his father all about Piandao already, but it was worth bringing up again, he thought. 

“I had a space sword and everything…”

“That you forged yourself and ultimately lost in the final battle against the former Fire Lord’s airship troops. Sokka, I’ve told you before and will keep telling you as long as I live: I am so proud of you. You have seen and done and learned things I never could have imagined for you, that I would never have been able to prepare you for even if I had imagined them. It’s not a failure of the man you have become if you occasionally drop a knife.”

Although Sokka’s heart swelled as it always did when his father called him a man, his mind tripped over the concept of his father not being able to prepare him for something. Then again, his father had only known a life of war, too, and had done his best to pass all his knowledge and wisdom on to Sokka. Right? Except...he’d also had some sort of normalcy. Fallen in love with a local girl, gotten married, had kids...all fairly unwarlike activities...

“Dad?” Sokka ventured tentatively. They’d never talked about this sort of stuff before. His father had left before it became relevant. “How did you know that Mom was, y’know...the one?”

“Oh, Sokka,” Hakoda said heavily as he clapped a hand on his son’s shoulder, a man getting ready to sink into history. “I hope you’re not expecting a love-at-first-sight fairytale romance. I was never struck suddenly with the realization that your mom was my soulmate or any nonsense like that. Your mother and I...we made a commitment to each other.”

“Well, yeah, isn’t that what everyone does? I mean, getting married is a commitment and all that, but how did you _know_?”

“What I mean, son, is that it wasn’t so much about _knowing_ as it was about _choosing_.”

“I don’t...understand.”

“See, some people have this notion about love and relationships that there is only one right person out there for everyone, and that when you meet that person, you’ll just — _bam_ — know then and there that they’re ‘The One,’ the one person you’re meant to be with. But that’s not how relationships work. There’s no such thing as one perfect person for all of us. 

Life is all about the choices that we make, even in situations that seem beyond your control. In those moments, you can still choose how you want to think about or handle what’s been thrown at you. A commitment is really just...making that same choice over and over. Every day you wake up and decide, ‘What kind of man will I be today? What kind of brother? Or son? What kind of friend? What kind of...lover?’”

“Dad, please,” Sokka winced.

With a laugh, Hakoda continued, “So, when I say your mother and I made a commitment to each other, I wasn’t referring to the marriage ceremony, although that was of course part of it. I mean every day we were together was a conscious decision we made to be a team.”

This was all so paralyzing! The only thing Sokka felt like he could make effective choices about right now was which side of the fish to cut first. 

“I’m sensing,” Hakoda offered after a few moments of silence between them, “that these are not hypothetical questions.”

“Okay, so, I get that commitment is just deciding to make the same choices every day. But that makes it sound so easy!” Sokka blurted out. “How do you know you’re making the right decision? How can I make a commitment like that to Suki when I don’t even know what life looks like anymore? I mean, what comes next? What is there to life anymore?”

“Well…” Hakoda said, looking around them, “this.”

“This?”

“It’s just...living. Making your way. Making sure you have something to eat. Spending time with loved ones. You don’t have to define your life by big goals or milestones, especially not ones as big as ending a war or saving the world. Life can be very mundane and seemingly aimless, and the true beauty and value is in the little moments in between. Cleaning fish with your son, talking about women and the meaning of it all. For instance.” 

Hakoda smiled softly at his son, and Sokka looked down at his poor fish. Not only was he out of practice, but he was distracted and agitated, and it showed. The fish was a mess of jagged cuts and partially-removed insides. 

“Were you...ever afraid? With Mom, I mean? About the commitment thing?” He kept his eyes on the fish. Some brave warrior he was…

“Sure I was.” Sokka looked up at his father in surprise. “It takes a lot of trust in another person to make that kind of commitment, and opening yourself up to that kind of trust is a very vulnerable thing. It’s natural to want to protect yourself from that kind of openness, because the hurt and pain you feel if something goes wrong is very real.”

Sokka thought of Yue. He thought of how his father must have felt after...after everything. He thought of his sister, telling him that she and Aang were taking things slow, and of how he’d hesitated initially to pursue his own relationship with Suki. Except now he wasn’t afraid of not being able to save her from physical danger. That was easy — Suki was more than capable of taking care of herself and others, and the physical threats now were comparatively low. Now, it was that he didn’t know _what_ they were up against, because without all the fighting, without Team Avatar...who was _he_?

“But what’s scary about that commitment,” Hakoda continued, “is also what makes it so powerful. When you’re vulnerable together, you can find strength in each other.”

He and Suki made a _great_ team of warriors, Sokka thought, remembering the takedown of Ozai’s airships. Would they make an equally great team just...living life? He wasn’t sure if he’d figured it out that far yet, but he really, really wanted to.

“Sokka?”

Sokka shook his head at the sound of his father’s voice, trying to tune back in to the moment. Hakoda’s hand was on his shoulder again, steadying, and Sokka turned his knife around and around in his hand while his thoughts muddled and scattered.

“Tell me about an in-between moment you had with Mom,” he finally said, looking up to meet his father’s gaze. The creases at the corners of Hakoda’s eyes deepened with joy. 

“Ah, be careful what you wish for there, son. Your mother and I, we had a lot of good times.”

***

He figured most people would be surprised to learn of his haiku battle back in Ba Sing Se, but honestly, making haikus was easy. Not because words were easy, but because numbers were easy. Systems were easy. Really, a haiku was just a poetry schematic, and who couldn’t follow schematics?

***

“I’m telling you,” Sokka was saying, pointing enthusiastically at the world map spread out in front of him. “Build transportation hubs along the coastline here, here, and here, and at each hub build a harbor and a train depot. Then have the trains follow these routes inland. You could even create more train depots here and here,” he said, circling a couple more points of interest, “but the most important thing would be setting up the harbors and the train depots on the coast. Then every region will be connected, because the ones not covered by train will be supplemented by easy marine access.”

The whole crew had gathered in Omashu. At least for Zuko and Aang, it was part of an opportunity to restore diplomatic relations with the local governments of the Earth Kingdom. For Sokka, Suki, Katara, and Toph, it was an excuse for a reunion. But when conversation had turned to sharing resources between nations to repair some of the economic damage done during the war, Sokka couldn’t help but interject with a proposal about standardizing international travel. He’d actually been thinking about it for quite some time, in part because visits with Suki were becoming logistically more difficult the more time he wanted to spend alone with her — meaning no Aang, and thus no Appa. But the more he thought about it, the more it felt like a good way to help restore balance. 

“It could work, but most of these regions are outside my jurisdiction,” Zuko pointed out.

“Not a problem!” Sokka asserted confidently. “I’m sure His Avatarliness could sweet-talk Kuei into it. You should offer to share engineering resources and iron from the Fire Nation, and collaborate with whoever runs the monorail up in Ba Sing Se. Make it a group project. He’d probably be more likely to sign on if it feels like a team effort.”

“Okay.” Zuko shrugged, but in a way that Sokka knew meant he liked the idea. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“That’s the spirit!” 

Sokka turned when he felt Suki’s hand brush over his shoulder. She smiled at him, her eyes extremely bright, and said in a low voice, “You’re really good at this.”

“Oh yeah?” Whenever she looked at him like that, it made him want to kiss her. Like _really_ kiss her. But they were crowded around a table in Bumi’s palace surrounded by all their friends, so he held back. “Wait, what am I good at?”

“You know,” she replied, running her hand up and down his arm. It was an unconscious gesture, and the casual way she touched him always made him feel bubbly and warm. “All this planning and strategizing. Coming up with a whole cross-nation public transportation system. Figuring out innovative ways to solve problems. You’re really, really clever, Sokka.”

Man, he was _itching_ to be alone with her, but it wasn’t going to happen this visit, not with the whole group staying together in one of the newly-newly refurbished chambers in the palace. There was a pretty hefty lump in his throat, courtesy of Suki’s compliment, and he could only gape dumbly at her because of it. 

“Would you two quit making googly eyes at each other over there?” Toph snarked from across the table. 

“How would you know if our eyes are googly or not? You can’t even see us!” Sokka shot back, his cheeks flushing.

“I don’t need to see a thing, you two are just that obvious.” 

Suki only giggled, but Sokka felt like he’d been caught in an intimate moment and couldn’t fight the heat flaring in his face while he sputtered. 

“We’ll try to google more discreetly,” Suki teased, nonchalantly leaning into Sokka and snaking her arm across his shoulders. 

“That’s all I ask,” Toph said back with a smirk, tipping her chair onto two legs and folding her arms across her chest, the picture of insouciance. 

Sokka turned his head to look at Suki again. Her face was close to his, propped on his shoulder. She was looking across the table at Toph, Katara, and Aang, and her whole face was smiling. Something below Sokka’s sternum squeezed tight. 

“Wanna...go on a walk later or something?”

Her eyes, almost teal in the greenish glow of the banquet room, shifted to look at him, and her smile broadened. She nodded and placed a kiss on his shoulder before leaning back into her own seat, and if Sokka didn’t know better, he’d believe in this moment that he was capable of airbending. 

It was dark out by the time they broke off from the others, though it was barely past dinnertime. The air was brisk, and Sokka used it as an excuse to drape his arm around Suki’s shoulders and hold her close. She was always telling him how snuggling up against him was like cuddling with a stove. Suki seemed to approve of the gesture, though, as she almost immediately reached her left hand up to tangle her fingers with Sokka’s, pulling his arm across the front of her body like a scarf. 

As they walked in silence, Sokka thought back to the last time they’d been together, and how he’d wondered if love meant giving up everything to be with another person. Walking through the streets of Omashu with Suki by his side, after discussing reconstruction plans with all of his friends, he realized how narrow-minded his fear had made him. 

“Suki! Look at that!” he said suddenly, using their joined hands to point up to the sky. “Check it out, shooting stars!”

“Oh, wow...there’s so many of them!”

He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes, watching her watching the meteor shower. 

“Yeah… They kinda remind me of those fireflies, from last time I visited Kyoshi Island…”

Suki met his furtive glance with one of her own. “Sokka…” she said quietly, knowingly.

“Look. Suki. You know I’m not very good at expressing how I feel with words. I feel...lucky that you’ve been able to put up with that. Put up with me, I mean. But I think maybe...maybe you’re kind of the same as me in that way? Because talking about feelings somehow...feels more exposed, I guess, than even, like...being naked. And it took me a while to be okay, y’know? With being...verbally naked in front of you. But. You should know that...I trust you. Completely. With my life. With my...everything. I don’t know exactly what’s next for me, but what I _do_ know is that I want to find out with you.”

Maybe he could even be an engineer, or an advisor of some sort. Suki was right — he _was_ good at that stuff. For the first time in a while, all the possibilities in front of him felt inspiring rather than suffocating.

“And I don’t know, maybe you already knew all that stuff. You did say you never doubted how I feel about you. But the past several months I’ve been feeling more and more like I should _say_ something, you know? Let you know how I feel about you besides just...kissing you like crazy all the time. Not that there’s anything wrong with kissing! I really, really, really like kissing you. But then I started to worry if that was _all_ we did and I couldn’t _tell_ you how I feel, did that mean something was wrong? And I-”

“Sokka.”

They’d stopped walking at some point, and Sokka guessed by Suki’s hand on his chest that she’d stopped them.

“Yeah?”

She leaned up then to kiss him, but before he had time to react, she pulled back.

“You talk too much.”

And then she dragged him down to her again. This time when their lips met, Sokka’s mind went quiet, like a soft blanket draped over his thoughts. The kiss was the warmth of their bodies pressed together against the bite in the chilly night air. It was the bright flash of a meteor in an inky sky. It was Sokka’s rib cage expanding until there was room inside him for two.

When Suki pulled back again, her eyes were glimmering. 

“I think it’s a good thing that we show each other how we feel, even if we’re not always saying it out loud. But I understand what you mean. Sometimes the kissing and stuff can feel a little...selfish,” she said, biting the corner of her lip. “Not that I think you’re selfish when we’re together like that, of course. I always...well, you take really good care of me.”

Sokka coughed a little and cursed, for the millionth time that day, their lack of privacy.

“But I get that that’s not really the same as what you were wanting to do.”

“I mean, I always _want_ to do that…”

“You know what I mean!” she laughed, shoving his shoulder. “I’m talking about _verbal_ nakedness right now, stay on topic.”

“Hey, you brought it up!”

“What I’m _trying_ to say,” she said while they wrestled each other’s arms. They both knew she was the better grappler, but she kept letting him get the upper hand because it was more fun that way, “is that I trust you with my everything, too.”

***

The first time he said it, he was acutely aware of everything: the partly-floral, partly-musky scent of her where he had his face buried against Suki’s neck; the press of her fingertips on the back of his head, slightly scratchy against the stubble on his scalp; the way his chest constricted and then opened wide, as if the words were squeezing through a narrow opening only to expand boundlessly once they were free. He said, “I love you,” low and soft against her hair, like speaking the words directly into her for safe-keeping. She repeated the words back to him, against his cheek, and pressed a kiss there to anchor them. As she turned to leave, he still said, “You’re my favorite boomerang,” and her eyes were still squinchy and sad, but at least he knew he’d said everything he needed to say.

**Author's Note:**

> Suki's use of "the fireflies are glimmering with such warmth" as a way to say "I love you" is inspired by the urban legend of Japanese author Natsume Soseki once correcting a student's literal translation of "I love you" (from English to Japanese) by offering a much more subtle translation, instead - "The moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it?" (or, in some versions of the story, "The moon is blue tonight"). I wanted to put my own spin on it because it didn't feel appropriate for Suki to reference the moon when explaining her feelings for Sokka. >.>
> 
> Also, I don't think I could haggle to save my life. I watched a bunch of videos of YouTuber Collin Abroadcast haggling in knockoff markets for tips.


End file.
